Team Building with Panacea Villas

Team Building event with Panacea on Koh Matsun / Thailand, 24th to 26th June 2011.

Adventure Team Building - Survivor Island

The Background

When Panacea Residence Group wanted a memorable team building event, Making Teams pulled out all the stops to organize a unique Survivor-style weekend that proved to be an exciting mental and physical challenge.

The four teams – a total of 26 participants – were taken on a fleet of three long-tail boats from Nathon, Koh Samui, to Koh Tan, a picture-book tropical island that proved to be the perfect setting for this adventure-packed weekend.

To encourage the flow of cooperative energy, the first activity was a round of “Frenzy,” which quickly lived up to its name. The object of this full-contact game for each team to try and gather all the colored balls, and there was no shortage of enthusiasm. After much wrangling, the competitors realized that they needed to work together of their goals were to be realized.

Making Camp

Following a quick boxed lunch, teams were briefed on the criteria for the Camp Building Competition, and urged to use their engineering and creative thinking skills to design and build sleeping, eating and socializing areas using the allotted tools and materials, and whatever else might be found about. The time limit expired, sites were then judged on safety, practicality, and inventiveness.

Once camp was set, it was time to set the storyline for adventure: The Panacea teams were told they were stranded on this exotic island, but there was a local tribe, ready to do trade. Play “money” was allocated, and an array of food and supplies was presented. Planningand negotiation would be essential, as the teams needed to be consider what they would need for the meals they would be cooking over the next two days and how to best manage their money.

The first dinner was more than sustenance: it would be evaluated for the Cooking Competition, during which members of team were expected to work together to cook several dishes that would be appetizing enough to “curry” favor from a discriminating group of judges. Creative thinking and cooperation were indeed part of the successful recipe.

A New Island of Exploration and Adventure

Saturday morning began with still more “wheeling and dealing” as teams bid on various ingredients for breakfast during “Island Dilemma.” Would cooperation rule the day, or would some go hungry?

A good breakfast was especially important that morning, as the teams would be heading off to Koh Matsun – an even smaller, more remote island with a long stretch of pristine beach – where they would face the physically and intellectually demanding task of designing and building rafts, a test of both leadershipand problem solving. The real test would come in race between the two rafts, which proved to be as exciting and amusing as it was tiring. A small crowd of day-tripping tourists watched the action from the beach and seemed rather impressed with the participants’ ambitious efforts!

It was then back to Koh Tan and a bonfire bar-be-cue on the beach shared by all the teams. Socializing and relaxing was the order of the evening, but more intense competition was planned for the next and final day.

A Last Day of Lasting Memories

The morning began with Inventory Transfer, based on the Tower of Hanoi Cunundrum. All four teams had to move a pyramid of progressively-sized pillows across an imaginary river, one piece at a time, following some very specific restrictions on how the pillows could be moved and stacked. A real brain teaser that required fast moving and thinking, as well as good communication and planning.

The first competition of the day complete, the long tail boats were boarded again, and it was back to Koh Matsun for the Island’s Challenge. Using crates and boards, along with a big dose of trust and cooperation, the teams raced to cross of imaginary pond filled with dangerous snakes and crocodiles. Only if all the team members cooperated with each other and the other teams would this be possible.

The final challenge of this incredible weekend was a Novus designed especially for Panacea: “Dive the Word.” The four teams were merged into two, and a relay race to the bamboo poles anchored off shore began. Each pole had a letter attached to it underwater. One at a time, the racers were expected to dive beneath the surface to read the letter, report it back to their team and then work with their teammates to unscramble the word. Once the puzzle was solved, another relay followed to bring the poles to the beach in the proper order to spell out the word. Good communication and cooperation were as important as speed and strength.

The teams were exhausted, but their spirits hardly dampened. The Panacea group not only had a memorable and rewarding adventure, they had forged bonds that would make future work interaction more productive than ever.